Customer Reviews

Lark's Tongues in Aspic: 30th Anniversary

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Ten to 15 albums in rock history are unlike anything that came before them, and have never been matched. Lark's Tounges In Aspic is one of them.

King Crimson created a strange mix of Stravinsky, Jungle Grooves and abstract jazz here. The title suite builds from little nature noises to a wrecking ball Les Paul riff to an eccentric, thorny funk. Each part sounds like nothing else in popular music; yet it all fits together as organically as the verse, bridge and courus of a Brill Building song.

Book Of Saturday and Exiles are ballads--in theory. But the lyrics are so filled with wry twists, and the playing is so angular, any equation with pop proves absurd a few seconds into a first listen. The two songs seem to form a genre of their very own.

The second half of the album-"Easy Money," "Talking Drum," and the second part of the title track-further experiment with the hybrids layed out on the first half. Jazz solos are played over strange animal noises. The violin is given a Mozart-like line while gongs are banged with chains. It is incredibly wierd, incredibly fresh and incrediably brilliant.

If you are sick of the same old sounds, try this. "But its from 1973!" you say.

Yes, but rock has yet to catch up to Larks Tounges In Aspic.

This album is such an amazing achievement that even Crimson couldn't replicate it. I happily give it one of my few 5 stars - unlke many, I don't come on here just to "vote" for my favorites. 5 stars means that this is a work that I can barely imagine improvement on. Although the album has it's brightest moments when the singer is not singing, that's not nearly enough to dull its value.

Briefly, the instrumentation and crispness of sound is unparalleled even with more current production techniques and the supposed progress that is always occuring. We haven't seen anything like this since. It makes other forms of "progressive" rock look like a joke. Here is a music that goes by that guise but is neither progressive nor rock. Not progressive because no one could effectively progress beyond this pinnacle of the idiom, and its uniqueness. Not rock - although of course you can hear elements of it. The musical language and instrumentation are too diverse. Rock makes its name on repetition and relative simplicity. This is musical, spontaneous, exciting stuff, the way "rock" hasn't been in years.

1973's _Larks' Tongues In Aspic_ is arguably King Crimson's most experimental and "progressive" out of their classic '73-'74 period. This is also the album where Crimson attempted their first stab at metal. While King Crimson lost enough musicians in their long career to fill up a school classroom, the lineup of Robert Fripp, John Wetton and Bill Bruford seemed to be the finest to many. Robert Fripp (guitar/mellotron), John Wetton (vocals/bass), Bill Bruford (drums), David Cross (violin) and Jamie Muir (percussion) showcase their masterful musicianship here. They gel perfectly together to give us an amalgamation of metal blended with classical, jazz, funk and tribal rhythms to create soundscapes that are fiery, ominous, mysterious, transcendent and spellbinding. Jamie Muir (percussionist for this album only) had the creativity of a madman here, as he used plastic bottles, plates, bowls, chains and all-sorts to create otherworldly percussive acrobatics. Now, onto the tracks:

"Larks' Tongues In Aspic (Part One)"--This is the first of three instrumentals on the disc. This 13 1/2 minute piece features percussive ambience, fiery drumming, slithering violins and explosive proto-industrial metal. Some of the lurking and foreboding violin textures found here possibly foreshadowed what was to be heard on "Providence" (from _Red_, on which David Cross makes an appearance). John Wetton even misses a (bass) note on here, which not only proves that instrumental wizards are human, but mistakes can make perfect art. It also gives this track a live, natural and improvisational feel.

"Book Of Saturday"--A beautiful ballad. The arrangement is unconventional for a typical ballad, but still melodic and moving. John Wetton's moving vocals combined with Robert Fripp's tasteful noodling and David Cross' soothing violin playing is truly beautiful. I believe there are no drums on this track.

"Exiles"--This track brings reminiscence to "Epitath" (from _In The Court Of The Crimson King_). Robert Fripp manages to slip a guitar line from the aforementioned track on here as well (the G-F#-G-F#-A melody). A mellow, ethereal and mellotron-laden r&b/symphonic rock track.

"Easy Money"--While featuring menacing lyrics, is mostly an instrumental showcase. Jamie Muir chain-slaps his multitude of percussive instruments with menace, while Robert Fripp noodles away with snaky, scaly and improvisation-like soloing. I call this a strange mix of classic r&b-infused hard rock, with John Wetton's vocals adding slight blues atmospheres.

"The Talking Drum"--An instrumental featuring tribal rhythms galore. This is probably the most straightforward on here in terms of rhythm.

"Larks' Tongues In Aspic (Part Two)"--An arrhythmical funky hard rock instrumental. All the musicians shine here collectively. Complex motifs are layered atop one another, which can challenge even the most cerebrally-inclined (Bill Bruford sounds like he's playing a different track altogether). Near the end, you hear abrasive percussion-bashing from Jamie Muir, which may sound like pure noise to many, but still manages to sound fresh and exciting.

It's pretty futile to pick favorites out of King Crimson's catalog, but _Larks' Tongues In Aspic_ (to me) is one of their strongest efforts. If hard rock combined with funk, elements of modern classical and jazz floats your boat, pick this album up.

This was one of those albums that made me realize how I could not trust my first impression, and how something very different could grow on you after awhile. I did not enjoy it at all the first time I heard it. I was used to the lush, almost symphonic sound of King Crimson's first three albums, and Larks' Tongues sounded very dry, sparse, and abraisive, and I could not stand John Wetton's singing.

Later on, I had acquired Starless & Bible Black, and Red, and found myself getting used to this new minimalist Crimson. That was when I came back to Larks' Tongues, and decided liked it better than anything Fripp's Crafty Crew had recorded in any incarnation.

The album opens with several minutes of African thumb piano music, creating a meditative setting. This fades off and is replaced by urgent, staccato violin music, intertwining ominously with some very distorted low guitar notes fading in. The energy builds quickly and relentlessly, culminating in a jarring high-volume instrumental, rhythmically complex, unapologetically dissonant, frantic, and quite savage - yet amazingly contained and precise.

"Book of Saturdays" and "Exiles" contrast the opener with two subdued and melodic vocal pieces, with lyrics by longtime (then) collaborator Pete Sinfield. I hate to say this, but John Wetton's singing on these works doesn't do them justice; his voice is strained on long notes, and could have benefitted from just a bit of production enhancement. But band visionary Robert Fripp was going for a more raw, natural sound (which he would later refer to as audio verite') in this reinvention of King Crimson, consequently a pleasing vocal sound was not an issue here.

Wetton's vocals serve him better on the louder, more edgy "Easy Money", which features eccentric noises by guest percussionist Jamie Muir. This segues into "The Talking Drum", primarily a percussive interlude by Bill Bruford that builds in rhythmic intensity, joined on bass by John Wetton, underscored by the ominous, diatonic freeform sustained distorted guitar of Robert Fripp. The piece concludes abruptly with a long, excruciating screeching noise, and slams right ahead into "Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part 2". If there was ever any doubt that a 5/4 instrumental could rock and rock HARD, that doubt is laid to rest here. Employing more of the dissonance and diatonics from Part 1, the energy lets up just long enough for a melodic section on violin to slowly build it back up again. Violinist David Cross is given a chance to wail in a brief improv section; otherwise the piece maintains structural economy right up to an almost too abrupt crashing finale, which fades away leisurely, leaving the listener in silence save for his fast beating heart.

What might have made this collection so difficult to listen to at the time of its release - an uncompromising, non-cosmetic in-your-face approach to recording and production - is exactly what makes it sound so fresh and alive nearly 30 years later. Freed of the pops and rumbles of vinyl records so intrusive in the quieter sections, Larks' Tongues in Aspic achieves its intended dynamic potential in digitally remastered form. And thus a work ahead of its time comes of age. If there were anything it could be compared to, Trent Reznor comes to mind, and perhaps some of Primus' work. Otherwise, this mighty dinosaur stands well on its own ..... with some still very sharp teeth.

When you are done listening to this King Crimson album, the feeling that comes to mind is: "I want more!" I need more!" It's seriously adictive. And no wonder...

Robert Fripp, in his morphing KC lineups managed to get together (and maintain for three straight albums, up tho the "posthumous" 'Red' in 1974) a brilliant team consisting of John Wetton (bass and vocals), Bill Bruford (one of the best drummers ever and since to play, in my humble opinion), David Cross on violin, viola, mellotron & flute, and for this time only (he'd not be part of the other two albums), also Jamie Muir on percussion.

It would be limiting to say that the album "grows on you", though it actually does. But a quality of most of the songs is the music builds up, in an almost minimalist way in the beginning, gradually taking on more power as they go, and bursting with musical energy by the time they're over. This is particularly true of the opening track.

"Book Of Saturday" and the painfully beautiful "Exiles" may be among the closest things to a ballad that King Crimson has recorded, but make no mistake. These pieces are pivotal to the equilibrium in the album. It is not by coincidence they are placed following the musically exhaustive Part I track. "Easy Money", on the flip side, is a song that sets the stage as a musical bridge for the listener to jump into the syncopated 'Starless and Bible Black' that would follow this album, with its very rich rhythm base and obscure background noises.

By the time you get to "The Talking Drum" you're simply not 'with us' if you turn your CD player off, because the best is yet to come. With unbelievably complex metrics that change left and right (a staple that always identified Fripp and Bruford zoomed in on very strongly), coming from a rather "innocent" African bongo sound, with the gradual addition of a percussive bass line and a mellow violin that builds up the song more and more... it gets to the point where Fripp jumps in with initially subtle guitar riffs. Once Bruford steps up the pace, dropping the bongo for his drumset all is said and done: collective hysteria (if you let it go), but if you stay with it, one of prog rock's most rewarding listens, closing with a processed yell that will put your stereo's tweeter to the test, and leading into the now-classic guitar-intensive closing track.

If you are still wondering why you should listen to this album, consider this for a second: it's been 30 years (at the time of this writing) since it was recording, and it still draws the attention of bands such as Primus and Tool. Then, though not The Beatles, but King Crimson and this -regarded by the majority as their most influential album ever- need you to give them an opportunity as challenging their work may strike you at first.

Jamie Muir, Crimson's wild Scottish percussionist, entered a monastery soon after making this album. Perhaps he felt that nothing besides God could surpass this piece of perfection. This was Crimson's greatest line-up, recorded at a time when a huge audience was prepared to make the effort to appreciate this kind of music. As drummer Bill Bruford said, Crimson was one of the few bands where you could play in a time signature of 17/16 and still get to stay in a decent hotel. Almost no-one, short of Radiohead, tries to create music like this any more.

The opening track 'Lark Tongues in Aspic Part One' perhaps comes closest, of all studio tracks, to the live Crimson of the time. (You need to buy THE GREAT DECEIVER to discover precisely what live Crim was.) It's an extraordinary track, actually a very tight composition, but on the first few hearings, it sounds like a disjointed assembly of unrelated improvised duets and trios. (You even gets to hear a lark, although the mood of this track is utterly different from Vaughan Williams' 'Lark Ascending'.) David Cross's violin provides the continuity. (Why do so few of today's groups use violin? When I think of Van Der Graaf's Graham Smith, Curved Air's Darryl Way and Eddie Jobson, it seems to be a lost art. Maybe kids just don't automatically get taught violin in schools any more.)

Although not a guitarist, John Wetton was an excellent voice-and-bass replacement for Greg Lake. I suspect he also composed the more melodic tracks (e.g. 'Book of Saturday') on this epic album.

LARK TONGUES IN ASPIC was the first of a brilliant trio of classic albums, consisting also of STARLESS and RED. None of the single-CD Crimson compilations that I'm aware of contain any LARKS' TONGUES tracks. And rightly so. You have to hear this classic album in its entirety.

The little chime sound you hear at the beginning is a kalimba, an african thumb piano. After being hypnotized by this you will then hear a very well played, quiet, fluttering violin (the sound of lark's tongues?)Don't turn the volume up too loud here, because you will split your speakers when the crescendo of acid guitars come wailing into your brain. This is music of a sort you haven't heard, a classic example of acid rock, classical mixed with rock, and some sophisticated noisy percussion and jazz thrown in. Hey, relax, thats just the first track.

King Crimson, circa late 1972. After having three consecutive short-lived lineups fall apart beneath him, guitarist Robert Fripp had finally found a stable (kinda sorta) group again: an ex-Yes drummer with an aversion to straightforward timekeeping, a bass/vocal powerhouse seldom matched elsewhere, a classically trained violinist, and a mad percussive lunatic. What united them all was a desire to experiment and explore beyond the world of rock. Their first release was Larks' Tongues in Aspic, and it's.. for lack of a better term, a monster. It's calm, it's wild, it's bizarre, it's downright frightening. This stuff is not just the kind of heavy metal skull-pounding that gives a feeling of having your eardrums torn apart; there's also a more subtly unnerving kind of chaos lurking beneath it, like having your brain gnawed at from the inside by very small weevils. It's not just metal, not just rock, not just avant-garde weirdness.. Crimson has always been a progressive force in a league all its own.

"Larks' Tongues I" is the track covering the widest range (and not coincidentally the longest at 13 minutes). This one's a mind-warping blend of elements: a quiet African thumb piano, a good helping of atonal group anarchy, and gales of fierce riffing crazed enough to shred sheet metal. And it doesn't get entirely less weird from there. Oh sure, "Book of Saturday" is as masterful a slow ballad as KC has ever produced and "Exiles" has some of the most sweetly haunting violin known to man.. but on what was side two of the original record, all insanty breaks loose once more.

"Easy Money" twists a slow time-shifting groove into something vaguely evil (and the laugh at the end is downright creepy). "Larks' Tongues II" remains one of Fripp's most ripping and powerful tunes to this day, a masterful balance of odd meters and fiery power chords. It features a strangely compelling dynamic of balancing wild metal crunch and beautiful calm, whose echoes are still being heard in more modern acts like Opeth and Tool. Preceding the closer is the seven minutes of outright mayhem known as "The Talking Drum," which I don't think has any fitting adjectives in our language. It's just a simple repeated pattern building to a (literally) screeching crescendo, but the lunacy of the whole group in thrash mode twists it into something absolutely sick.

I give four stars because the real potential of this band was still yet to come. I don't just mean that LTiA lacks the cohesion of its successor Starless and Bible Black or the full hellish frenzy they would unleash with Red. I also mean that, compared with their later live counterparts, the studio tracks here sound (relatively!) tame. "Exiles" would go on to become more bittersweet and darkly beautiful; "Easy Money" picked up more speed and insane laughter to power it along; "Drum" and "Larks' II" became a blazing torrent of earth-shaking power that still scares me to death. But with all that being said.. it's still a rare album that packs so much creativity, vitality and sheer mayhem into something that sounds every bit as fresh 30 years after its release. Try Red if you want the best introduction to this group; then once the nightmares stop, try this or Starless next.

I was recently very bored so I was searching through my dad's box of vynils and came across Larks tongues in Aspic. Ever since I heard this album King Crimson has been one of my favorite bands This is one of those albums that changes your life in a good way. Alongside with Grunge rock I am also getting into Progressive rock. Every single song on this album is amazing from start to end. The first song(Larks Tonge In Aspic Part 1) is just as powerful and aggressive as the song Red. It features a booming bass from John Wetton and then rapid fire guitar licks from Robert Fripp. The other songs are just as good. I play violin and viola myself so I really appreciated David Cross's musical abilites on almost every song. The rest of the album is in general a lighter more folksy side of King Crimson. The Book of Saturday is a very harmonic song, so is Exiles, I think that Exiles is just about the most buetiful song I've ever heard. The other songs are just as great especially Easy money. I think that Bill Brufford is THE best drummer to date and it shows in this album in a more discreet and melodic way. If you like any kind of music you should buy this CD it is amazing. This is the best King Crimson album.

I have thousands of Compact Discs, I am huge Beatles fan, I love Neil Young and I wish that God had saved the Kinks. But this is the record I have listened to the most in the past 33 years.
A lot of my friends and family consider this to be noise. That may be true, but if so, it is beautifully orchestrated and executed noise.